Ybor City Florida

Ybor City is a historic district in Tampa, Florida. It was named after Vincent Martinez Ybor, a Spaniard who immigrated to Cuba at the age of 14. Starting off as a cigar salesman, Vincent Ybor eventually began to manufacturer the cigars he previously sold — he started his own cigar factory in Havana. But this time in Havana was a time of unrest, and a time on the brink of a war. As the Cuban Revolution raged, Vincent Ybor moved his factory and his workers to Key West, Florida.

The success of the relocation fluctuated. Ybor’s business was profitable, but labor and transportation problems kept true success evasive. A friend of Ybor's, Gavino Guiterrez, convinced him to investigate Tampa as a place to set up cigar roots. Tampa offered the climate, the water, and the transportation necessary for a productive operation.

Ybor was sold on the Tampa idea and purchased a large acreage of land in 1886 and not only started a business, but started a town. This area, built for the purpose of housing Ybor’s factories and his factory workers, became fittingly known as Ybor City.

Following the lead of Ybor, other cigar manufacturers moved to this area and by the close of the 19th century, Ybor City and Tampa had the honor of being the largest cigar manufacturer in the world. Not to be outdone by the expansion of the industry it held, the area itself also saw a population boom as well. When Ybor City was incorporated by Tampa into its municipality, the population shot up to 3000; three years later that number nearly doubled.

It was truly home to the cigar industry. Most of the residents made their living making cigars and those who weren’t rollers often found jobs in a cigar-related trade. Some made cigar boxes and some made cigar bands, others owned restaurants where fans of “No Smoking“ signs were refused service. It was also a melting pot of cultures, home to a variety of Spanish, Italian, African and Cuban immigrants. For many, English was a second language. It was this diversity of groups that grabbed onto the cigar industry, setting the culturist tempo of a worldly luxury.

As more factories were built, Ybor City became the headquarters for cigar production, out-producing even Havana. At the center of this was Ybor - he offered aid and monetary gain to reel manufacturers in from Cuba. By the 1900s, Ybor City was known as the “Cigar Capital of the World.”

Ybor City continued to grow and prosper, but the world around it did not. The Great Depression, the popularity of cigarettes, the prevalence of organized crime in the area, and the introduction of cigar-rolling machinery all led to Ybor City’s demise. This was compounded when the owners of machine made cigars started a “spit campaign,” a campaign stating that saliva from the cigar rollers often found its way into a finished cigar. This drastically hurt the businesses based on hand rolling cigars and by the 1930s, as machines replaced workers and Cubans went back to their homeland, Ybor City was the capital no more.